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The Amazon Kindle Fire is not the only 7-inch Android tablet making its debut this week. The Samsung Galaxy Tab family of products is adding a mid-range, compact device called the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus.

It’s powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core CPU paired with Android 3.2 Honeycomb and 1 GB of RAM. It sports a 7-inch, 1024×600 pixel screen and comes with 16 GB or 32 GB of storage space and a 3-megapixel camera (plus a 2-megapixel one on the front for video chats).

On the connectivity front, it supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0 as well as 3G/HSPA, and Samsung managed to squeeze all of the above into a case that’s 9.96 mm thin and weighs 345 g.

The device’s specifications are slightly weaker than those of its closest of kin, the Galaxy Tab 7.7, which Samsung officially unveiled a month ago at the IFA trade show in Berlin.

A key piece of information about the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is, however, still missing: its price.

The device is very interesting when compared to Amazon’s Wi-Fi-enabled Kindle Fire, which lacks a camera, but costs $199. If Samsung manages to keep the price of its latest tablet within $100 of the Fire, it could be an interesting contender in the increasingly crowded 7-inch tablet space.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus will arrive in Indonesia and Austria at the end of October, followed by a gradual rollout to the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world.

A text-based, context-less search experience, the type of search experience consumers have come to expect on the web, is becoming passé as touchscreens replace keyboards and tablets re-imagine what’s possible.

“I give you a query and you give me an answer,” says Norman Winarsky, vice president of SRI Ventures and longtime search expert, on what search is today. “But the search bar doesn’t understand my query.”

“The tablet offers the opportunity for discovery, as well as for search,” he adds, “and not only for discovery, but for inspiration.”

As the co-founder of personal assistant startup Siri — which was acquired by Apple and may find its way into iOS 5 — and an investor in a number of future tech search-driven startups, Winarsky has an ever-present eye on trends in search.

In an interview with Mashable, Winarsky details how tablets are changing the way we search.

The Unified Experience

“Tablets enable a full, interactive experience that involves not only text, but potentially speech and interactions,” he says.

Search on tablets will incorporate how you engage with your tablet’s touchscreen, front and back cameras and microphone. “Where are you looking? What are you seeing? How much time are you spending reading?,” he says as ways to imagine new avenues for search on tablets.

The tablet, more so than other devices, can know enough about you to understand the context around your queries and give you better answers, he says. “Search becomes a unified experience on a tablet … a unified experience between our eyes, our ears and our cognitive processes.”

The future of search, as pioneered by the tablet’s form factor, is the dynamic interaction among all of your senses, foretells Winarsky.

Winarsky’s predictions aren’t all that far fetched, especially if you align yourself with the camp that believes that tablets will replace laptops and PCs as the primary devices for personal computing purposes.

Forrester, for one, estimates that tablet sales will total 195 million between 2010 and 2015, with tablet sales eclipsing laptop sales by 2015. Apple is currently dominating the market; it alone sold 9.25 million iPads in its fiscal third quarter — the company’s best quarter ever.

In a post-PC world, keyboards will play second fiddle to fingers and gestures. Cameras will conjoin the physical with the virtual. Our voices will tell our tablets what we want, and our tablets will process speech in a near-cognitive fashion. All those dynamics will aid significantly in the discovery on information with right-here, right-now context.

The New Battle

Who then is best positioned to command this new frontier in next generation, tablet-optimized search?

“It’s kind of hard to bet against Google, isn’t it?” Winarsky says. Still, he admits that the company is behind in the tablet market with Android and behind in the social networking space, even with Google+. But, Google owns the text search market, and it has the resources to create a unified search experience, he says.

“In order to win the new battle of search, you’re going to have to win all of the elements of the unified experience,” Winarsky says. “You better be a dominant player in social networks … you better be a great player in artificial intelligence and speech recognition … you need to be able to understand the content of videos and images, and you need a far better interaction experience that enables you to better understand the human interaction with the tablet.”

But, will the unified search experience take the form of an application, an operating system or continue to be a literal search experience? “Eventually, search will not be a separate activity. It will be incorporated into the operating system of the tablet,” Winarsky says, though he qualifies his statement to add that this will take years to happen.

Search on tablets, as outlined here by Winarsky will be a far different experience than search as we know it. Will these tablet-inspired experiences trickle back to how we as consumers expect to search for information on the web via laptop or PC? “Absolutely,” says Winarsky.

“People will feel that search by text alone, in a text bar, without interaction and without multimedia is prehistoric in five to 10 years.” This, perchance, leaves the door open to a new king in the search market.

The Future of Search Series is supported by SES Chicago Conference and Expo, connecting the digital dots between search, social and commerce. The SES Chicago Conference & Expo takes a critical look at the latest developments to help marketers traverse the quickly developing landscape, with a special focus on the latest ecommerce trends and the latest technology launches from Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. Register with MASH20 and save 20%. Join the discussion #SESConf.

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It’s amazing what people can do with one of AMD’s new eight-core FX processors, a specially built chassis, and a few tanks of liquid helium. In a pre-release stunt, AMD rounded up a small group of expert overclockers to take the new processor toworld record speeds and beyond.

Don’t expect to do the same at home when the FX chips ship in late Q4 2011: overclockers Brian Mchlachlan and Sami Maekinen had the pick of the processor litter, and PCWorld reports that they looked specifically for chips that performed well at higher voltage levels. They took things slowly at first, with the FX eventually bumping up against the 8.0 GHz barrier thanks to a little liquid nitrogen.

It took the application of some liquid helium to really kick things into high gear, as the super-low temperatures allowed the FX to hit 8.429 GHz, besting the old record of 8.308 GHz. How well the system would actually perform under those conditions was left unexplored — this was all about hitting the highest clock speed, so the stress testing and benchmarking that comes with actually using an overclocked CPU was left by the wayside.

AMD was formally presented the Guinness World Record for Highest Frequency of a Computer Processor at their Fusion Zone event in San Francisco today. The timing and location seems to be yet another jab at their eternal rival though, as Intel also chose today to kick off their SF Developer Forum.

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Today at the TechCrunch Hackathon, Ford, the second largest automaker in the U.S., teamed with Spotify, the fast-growing Swedish music service that recently arrived in the states, to demonstrate the current opportunities for in-car app innovation as well as the new voice-activated Ford SYNCsystem. Just to clarify: This isn’t an “official partnership”, it’s just a cool hack meant to demonstrate how easy it is to integrate with SYNC. For those unfamiliar, Ford SYNC is the in-vehicle communications and entertainment system that allows drivers to make hands-free phone calls, as well as control music and other in-car entertainment with their very own vocal chords. SYNC recently added integration with AppLink (in 2011 Ford Fiestas for now) to allow hands-free use of smartphone apps in the car.

At Hackathon today, Ford offered developers the opportunity to learn more about SYNC’s API and demonstrate how to integrate apps like Spotify into SYNC. This is Spotify’s first in-car integration, and it’s still an initial hack, but it’s a pretty good start. We’re hoping this becomes a long-term Ford/Spotify strategy.

The tremendous growth of smartphone apps has created the need and the opportunity to provide the same voice-controlled solution for apps that drivers are now using in the car — but it also has to stay safe. “Look ma no hands!” is never something you want to hear while in a car with someone. SYNC provides users, through voice assistance, with the ability to easily control their car’s multimedia and app functions, and at at the Hackathon today Spotify is on board in the passenger seat.

According to Julius Marchwicki, the SYNC AppLink program manager, TC Hackathon was the perfect place to launch to give developers the information they need on Ford’s new API and SDK to get developers hacking on in-car entertainment and app goodness.

So just what’s possible for developers with SYNC AppLink at this point in its development? When working with SYNC-enabled smartphone apps, developers are able to create a voice user interface using SYNC’s in-vehicle speech recognition system, write information to the radio head display or in-vehicle touch screen, using the text-to-speech engine, the in-vehicle meny system to provide commands for their mobile app, and vehicle data, like speed, GPS location, and fuel economy. All good stuff to know, and it’s nice to see Ford, a company that didn’t look so hot a few years ago, getting in on the innovation train.

SYNC AppLink will be available in 10 models (of Ford vehicles) beginning in 2012, including Ford Fusion, the Fusion Hybrid, Mustang, Shelby, Fiesta, F-150, and more.

As seen on techcrunch.com

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As a commuting or exercising must-have, earphones are an essential part of modern life. If you’re in the market for a new pair then look no further — we’ve found 10 excellent options for you. Rather than go down the standard route though, we’ve searched long and hard to find earphones that look good as well as …

Here’s the latest future car to peek out from behind the Frankfurt Motor Show curtain, the Peugeot HX-1 plug-in hybrid. It features gullwing doors and a unique design the company calls “the first diesel hybrid in the world.”

Peugeot says its goal with this concept car was to create a conveyance for six passengers that uses plug-inhybrid technology and can still deliver sporty performance while maintaining fuel efficiency. The French carmaker is getting creative with this concept, with 2.2-liter HDi diesel “Hybrid4″ technology consisting of a diesel engine powering the front wheels while an electric motor powers the rear wheels.

It’s a somewhat simpler method of delivering plug-in hybrid power, unlike hybrids such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic hybrid which use a combination of an electric motor and internal combustion engine applied at the same time on the car’s front wheels.

According to Peugeot’s press release, the long, low-slung car can accommodate six passengers thanks to two retractable jump seats nestled between the front and rear seats. That small crowd of riders will be whisked to its destination post haste, thanks to the 299 hp of the combined electric and diesel power plants.

You’d think with all these swanky press materials, Peugeot was selling a production vehicle, not an experimental concept car:

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Where were you in 1996? If you were in cyberspace, surfing the World Wide Web, chances are you were waiting a long time for pages to load, laughing at the first Internet meme and suffering through some god-awful graphics.

My, how times have changed! While some of you weren’t even born yet, I was working on the web back then, and it certainly did feel different from today. Most comments came via email, servers were rickety and crash-prone, and even though HTML coding was a lot simpler, it still took a lot of patience to get things done.

But you know what? We knew this Internet thing was going to be big. Even then, many of us were predicting that the web would soon be the home of every major publication, TV network and retailer, accompanied by services we hadn’t even imagined yet.

Did you see this coming? Let us know in the comments about your experiences in the old days on the web.